Chocolate Tea Cake: Best Ever, Most Delicious Moist and Easy to Make
This is the best chocolate cake you will ever eat. Seriously. Oh, sure, grandma’s is better. And you might think that it is. Of course, that’s always the answer when she asks, but this is it. Really. And, it can be made into rounds or sheets or Bundts. Bundt is my favorite because the cake usually over flows just a wee bit and fills the center cone with a perfect portion of cake for the baker. Shh! Don’t tell.
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We like more than the classics for Thanksgiving and Christmas. A change of pace is sometimes the thing that really makes memories about the dinner.
Chocolate Tea Cake
This might well be the best chocolate cake I've ever had, and let me tell you, there have been many competitors enter my belly. It works as a bundt or a sheet or a round. Just superb.
Ingredients
Chocolate Tea Cake
- 1.5 Lb Light Brown Sugar 12 oz
- 12 oz White Sugar 6 oz
- 1# 2oz Cake Flour 9 oz
- 4.5 oz Dutch Process Coca 2.25 oz
- 1/2 oz Salt 1/4 oz
- 1/2 oz Baking Powder 1/4 oz
- 10 g Baking Soda 5 g
- 1 t Vanilla extract .5 t
- 12.5 oz Peanut oil (weight) 6.25 oz
- 12.5 oz Whole Eggs (weight) 6.25
- 26.5 oz Buttermilk (weight) 13.25
Instructions
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Sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder together. Add all the dry ingredients to the bowl of a stand mixer. If your mixer bowl holds less than 5 quarts, you will need to make the One Bundt pan recipe.
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Add the vanilla and oil and paddle on low speed for about 5 minutes. When done, use a rubber scrapper and clean down the sides and bottom of the bowl to make sure all the dry ingredients were mixed with the oil. Add the eggs, mix on low for 3 minutes and clean the sides and bottom of the bowl as before.
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Add the buttermilk to the mixing bowl with the speed on low. Add the buttermilk in small splashes at first. Too much buttermilk too fast and the mass of batter will fling the buttermilk out of the bowl making a mess (a BIG mess, trust me) and ruin your ratios making the cake a gamble instead of a sure thing. Once all the buttermilk is added, mix on low 2 more minutes to make sure all the batter is mixed. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl as before. If you find any large bits of batter, mash them against the side of the bowl with the scrapper to mix them into the batter.
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Scale the batter into the two Bundt pans. Place one Bundt on one sheet pan and bake at 350 degrees for about 50 minutes or until a cake tester, aka bamboo skewer, comes out clean. Remove from the oven when done, allow to rest 5 or 10 minutes to handle the pan and tip it out onto the sheet pan lined with baking paper. You may be lucky to have had the batter overflow like a volcano, but instead of making a mess outside, there can be a very yummy treat for the baker: a cone of cake inside the hollow part of the Bundt pan. That’s your treat. I never share mine.
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This cake needs no icing. For reals. Powdered sugar is just fine. But, if you have to ice it, a perfectly decadent chocolate icing or cream cheese icing would be amazing. If you find those ideas simply over the top, a simple glaze of 2 cups sifted powdered sugar, a small squeeze of corn syrup and a few teaspoons of boiling water whisked together and poured on top will be just fine. Serve with some super strong coffee or Kahlua.
Recipe Notes
If you wish to glaze the cake, it won't mind and no one will complain. My point was it is just so good, it needs no more help, but of course, help is always appreciated when given.
I made my youngest daughter Tea Cake for her birthday. Instead of a Bundt pan, I baked 8″ rounds and the remainder in a 1/4 sheet pan.
I have long felt that the single best icing for this cake, with the understanding that it is a complete and total sugar overload is cream cheese icing. She wanted “vanilla icing” so it was buttercream.
I’ve played with a variety of buttercream, with French being one of the best and most challenging. I gave a Swiss Buttercream a try and have found the next best thing to French. It has all the texture and volume I enjoy about French buttercream with far less frustration.
My own challenge was the small quantity of eggs and syrup made such a mess. In a bakery kitchen, with a large quantity of ingredients, it is a bit easier. The relative small quantities needed at home make the Swiss, in my opinion, superior for ease and mess.
Swiss Buttercream Icing
For the quantities needed at home, I find this superior in the unseen areas: anxiety and frustration. It is so much easier to make and that is worth a lot. The finished product is almost exactly the same as a French buttercream without the angst.
This quantity should be sufficient for a three layer cake filled and iced all the way around. Depending on how generous you are with the icing, there may be little left for graham cracker sandwiches.
Ingredients
Swiss Buttercream Icing
- 250 g Egg whites
- 417 g Granulated Sugar
- 567 g Unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into cubes
- 17 ml Vanilla Use a child medicine cup
- 1/2 t Salt
- Colors Optional
Instructions
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Whisk the egg whites and sugar together in the bowl of a stand mixer to combine them and ensure there are no dry patches of sugar.
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Place the bowl over a double boiler, making certain the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water and the bowl fits tightly on the pot. Whisk the egg whites/sugar mixture to the temperature of 161 degrees, F.
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Whisk egg whites mixture with the wire whisk at high speed. Whip at high until the temperature of the outside of the bowl feels cool to the touch. If you have a laser thermometer, 78 degrees or less is good.
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When egg whites are to the proper temperature to ensure the butter does not melt, add one chunk of butter at a time to the bowl. Mix on medium/high speed to maintain air and incorporate the butter. Allow each chunk of butter to be fully incorporated before the next addition.
When you have added half the butter, stop the mixer, scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl and continue mixing.
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As you add the butter, the egg whites will appear almost soupy and you'll have a knot in your throat that you've made an error.
All is well!
This is a normal development and by the time you get to the last bits of the butter, the icing will start to appear as it ought.
After the last piece of butter, add the vanilla and any color you wish if you are making only one color.
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Divide portions of the icing into bowls if you are coloring with two or more colors.
